The pope’s point, he said, is that particular circumstances can diminish or even eliminate responsibility and culpability, even in the case of negative precepts and absolute moral norms, such as the “in a more uxorio cohabitation.”

“The life of sanctifying grace is not always lost,” Fernández said, pointing to similar points made by both St. John Paul II and Benedict XVI.

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Even in these cases, however, “for Francis it is not the concrete circumstances that determine the objective morality,” said Fernández, adding: “The fact that conditions might diminish culpability does not mean that what is objectively bad thereby becomes objectively good.”

Therefore, “there can be a path of discernment open to the possibility of receiving the food of the Eucharist.”

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Discernment in such cases, he said, involves a person using his or her conscience to examine before God their real situation, together with its limits and practical possibilities, in the company of a pastor and enlightened by the Church’s teaching.

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That change is legitimate, said Fernández, who cites examples from history of the Church evolving, both in the understanding of her doctrine and of the disciplinary consequences that flow from it - over slaveholding, for example, or the question of the salvation of non-Catholics. Doctrine has remained constant but there have been at times clear shifts in the understanding and application of that doctrine, he added.

Over the past century alone, Fernández went on, there have been important changes even in the area of the discipline concerning the divorced and remarried. He cites the example of their being denied a church burial, which was one of the effects of excommunication of the divorced and remarried that was possible under the 1917 Code.